


a grave softer than your end

by afearsomecritter (jsaer), tragicallynerdy



Category: Critical Role (Web Series), UnDeadwood (Web Series)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Family Reunions, Fortune Telling, Gen, Harrowed Clayton, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:47:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25869925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jsaer/pseuds/afearsomecritter, https://archiveofourown.org/users/tragicallynerdy/pseuds/tragicallynerdy
Summary: His mama knew things (and sometimes he knew things too)."She has the gift," the townsfolk would whisper. "Ain't natural."("Oh sweetheart," his mama said, "you're gonna die bloody.”)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 52





	a grave softer than your end

**Author's Note:**

> afearsomecritter prompted tragicallynerdy with the line ("oh sweetheart," his mama said, "you're gonna die bloody”) and then she ran with it and it was AMAZING and then let me (afearsomecritter) springboard off of it and it was a blast and snowballed into the story below.

His mama had the gift. 

“Clairvoyant,” the rich lady in town called her, whenever she came calling for tea and sympathy. “Fortune teller,” the other kids at school whispered when they thought he wasn’t listening. “Witch,” his papa had spat, right before he walked out the door, never to return.

“I know things,” she said simply, whenever he asked. She’d smile, and card her hand through his hair. “That’s all, sweet pea.”

The townspeople hated her and loved her in equal measure. The men avoided her, until they needed her, needed her fortunes that would help them make their own. The women came calling more often, seeking guidance or aid in the form of the tinctures and tonics she made, the cards that she read for them. He overheard tears and pleading queries, saw hands clutched to collarbones and bellies, and learned that some of his mother’s work was not for him. But the gift… that _was_ for him.

Amos didn’t know what to call it, but he knew it was _special_. He grew up reading tea leaves and coffee grinds, looking for messages, for hints of what was to come, for anything to guide his path. His mama taught him well; she taught him to trust his gut, to act with intent, to give thanks to those who watched, and to understand the messages he saw. She traced the lines on his palm, smiled softly at whatever she saw there, and declared his future bright. (He never had any reason to disbelieve her; looking back, he was never sure of what she saw back then, of what shone so brightly in the soft hands he had back then.)

She had a deck of tarot that she handled carefully, delicately, more reverently than the preacher in town handled his Bible.

“You gotta be respectful, Amos,” she’d say, shuffling slowly. “And act with intent. Remember that, sweetpea.”

“Alright, mama,” he whispered, watching her lay down the first card. He _lo_ _ved_ this, loved the ritual of it, the meaning his mama could draw from the cards. It was beautiful, and so was she, and so was their life.

But not forever.

He remembered clearly the first time that he saw her have a vision. He was five years old, and her eyes flashed white, rolling back in her head. When she spoke it was dreamlike, quiet and confusing.

“He’s going,” was all she’d said. Amos clutched her hand, and in a blink she was back, staring down at him before her eyes filled with tears. She swept him up into a hug, and he hugged back, scared at whatever had happened, whatever had made her so sad. “It’ll be okay,” she whispered. “We’re gonna be fine.”

She started pinching pennies, and six months later his father was gone.

(amos won’t have his first vision until he is 19 years old, and he won’t understand it, won’t know what to make of the flashes of lightning and the preacher’s booming voice and the fangs flashing in the darkness. some of the visions are clear; others are not. but someday, someday they will all make sense, as these things are wont to do.) 

* * *

They figure out ways to survive, and although they are always poor, their house becomes rich and full in light and laughter and love in a way it never was when his father was home. He ran wild, learned all the gifts his mama could teach him, and learned some that she couldn’t.

But when he turned fifteen, something… shifted. When he is older, he will realize that it was the year that he met Liam Harvey, the catalyst, the one who shifted Amos’ fate. He’d tell his mama all about the new boy at school, and she’d smile and kiss his hair, saying how glad she is that he has a friend at last. Things were good, until they weren’t, until Liam was pressing for more and more, until he was handing Amos a gun with a flashing smile, and all Amos felt was a thrill at the touch of cold metal beneath his palm.

After that, his mama had stopped smiling when she read his palm. “The cards are troubling me,” she’d murmur, shuffling and shuffling and shuffling. (she didn’t let him touch them, not anymore.) He came in the door one day after school to see her staring at him with pure white eyes, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Oh sweetheart,” his mama had whispered, “you’re gonna die bloody.”

He walked back out the door, ignoring the curl of dread in his gut, hoping beyond hope that this would be one of the visions his mama didn’t remember. (it wasn’t, but she never brought it up again.)

“Please be careful, sweetpea,” she’d said a year later, clutching a sprig of rosemary in her hand. He was sixteen years old, and invincible in the way that sixteen year olds so often are. “I love you. Alright? No… no matter what happens. I _love_ you.”

He’d nodded, and kissed her on the cheek, and slipped through the door. He didn’t look back, and didn’t see her standing in the doorway, watching him leave with tears streaming down her face. He’d missed the vision she’d had six months prior, the one of Amos walking away, the one that filled her with a hollow realization that soon Amos would be gone, too (in more ways than one).

(and the worst thing about the visions, the cards, the tea leaves was this: that no matter how much she knew, and no matter how much she saw, she was powerless to stop it. he didn't understand at first, but he would later, when he tried to stop one gunfight he'd foreseen, then another, then another; it never made a lick of difference, each vision an immovable stone in a river to bash himself against, bloodier and bloodier for every attempt. so by the time he saw himself gunned down in the street by someone he'd thought of as a friend, he'd just smiled, slow and ironic. he ignored the vision and the future it held with gritted teeth and a foolhardy determination to forge his own path and make his own destiny.

“it ain’t nothing,” he’d laughed to himself, teeth bloody from the lip he’d bitten during his last vision. “it don’t have to mean a goddamn thing.”

“you’re gonna die bloody,” she’d said, and the words echoed in his mind for fifteen years, a warning, an unavoidable truth. no matter how much he ignored the future, how much he laughed at his own visions, he knew in his gut that there was no escaping that eventuality, no escaping-

he should have known that there can be no escape from fate. not for men like him.)

He left his mama when he was sixteen years old, carrying the gift she’d given him. He was sure he’d never see her again. 

(amos kinsley never did.)

* * *

The man who used to be Amos Kinsley saw his mama for the first time in sixteen years (to the day) on a bright December morning.

Clayton was leaving the church, winter air snapping at his nose as he swore and scrambled for his scarf (the inside of the church was warm and if half of that was his blush from talking to a certain preacher that's his business) and nearly walked into the woman about to enter.

He almost didn't look up in time.

* * *

Maria Kinsley had rarely entered a church of her own volition. She was willing to do it just this once, just to ask the preacher where her baby boy was.

She’d stood at the gates of the cemetery for ages and ages staring over the rows and rows and rows of grave markers, so many for a fairly small town and the thought of wandering until she saw her son’s name was-

(bluebells clenched in whiteknuckled hand and she was frozen at the be-damned gates. it wasn’t an especially pretty graveyard and that’s such a useless thing to wish for that her baby her son would get to rest somewhere less rough less bloo-)

She headed for the church instead. 

And she nearly ran into a man leaving like his ass was lit on fire and tryin’ not to show it and he glanced up and-

Her baby stared back at her, lines in his face that she never got to see form creasing his so familiar eyes.

“Amos?” she whispered.

Joy was the first emotion to come burbling up in her chest before it was crushed by bone deep denial. She wasn’t wrong, she was never wrong, that’s part of it, the ability to see what will happen and never being able to stop it.

(she’d thought of that vision so often it’d blurred like a memory, soft edges and knife sharp details her son’s empty face and blood in the street-)

Apologies gathered on her tongue and then the man said-

“Mama?”

* * *

Later they will sit in the little rooms above the church, her son’s preacher having left them alone with coffee that could be mistaken for tar that nets a fond grimace from her _son_.

I was wrong, she’ll say when the silence has bloomed and withered.

You weren’t, he’ll reply, catching her hands in his rough calloused ones, gentle, gentle. 

She’ll stare at him, and he’ll tug at his shirt one handed, like _she’s_ the one who’ll disappear if he lets go.

There’s a wound over his heart. A neat hole now but it-it would’ve bled a lot. Bled out a life. She stares at it and then at him, joy like grief heavy in her throat. 

It didn’t take, he’ll say. I died, but it didn’t take. 

* * *

(maria kinsley has a son who died bloody. maria kinsley _has_ a son who lived in deadwood with a preacher and a grave she never visits. 

maria kinsley has a son who died bloody. and then he lives.)

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! hope you enjoyed! <3 afearsomecritter and tragicallynerdy


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